Aidy Bryant's Answer To Her Boyfriend's Proposal: "Is This A Joke?"

Rebecca FarleyApr 28, 2017 12:05 PM

Photo: Gregory Pace/REX/Shutterstock.

Allow me to introduce comedy's cutest couple: Aidy Bryant and Conner O'Malley. The two have been dating for almost nine years, they're adorable, and they just got engaged. Yay! Bryant, for those who don't know, is a regular performer on Saturday Night Live. O'Malley is more behind-the-scenes — for a time, he wrote for Late Night With Seth Meyers, and he regularly performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City with a group called The Law Firm. They are two funny people who love each other and that is delightful.

However, the perils of dating a comedian is that, well, sometimes everything feels like comedy. So, when O'Malley proposed to Bryant in October of 2016, Bryant was pretty sure it wasn't real.

The one thing that clued in a very confused Bryant was that her dog — who is, by the way, very cute — was wearing a bow tie. For Bryant, this was unusual.

"I walked in the door, and my dog had a bow tie on," Bryant said. She'd just come from Monday pitch meeting at SNL, where she'd just pitched Lin-Manuel Miranda. "I was like — my dog doesn't wear a bow tie. Where is he going tonight?"

"Basically as soon as I shut the door, a man — who I later discovered was Conner — frantically came around the corner and was just like, 'Will you marry me?'" As the story goes, O'Malley didn't bother with a box, getting on one knee, or any type of preamble. This was a bare-bones proposal with just a dog, a bow tie, and a ring. Or, in the words of Bryant herself: "Just a man standing in full terror very far from a dog in a bow tie, just holding a loose ring, going, 'Will you marry me?'"

The sweet part of the whole story is that O'Malley knew his future fiancée would want to be wearing a bra when she received the question.

"He was like, 'You've always said you wanted it to happen in our house, if it happened... but I also knew you probably wanted to be wearing, like, a bra and have makeup on." According to Bryant, these limitations gave O'Malley a very tiny window during which he could propose. "It's about a 40-second window before I get in the door and I rip off my mask."

Presumably, just after the proposal, Bryant removed her mask anyway. (Because, really, how long does it take you after you get home from work to free yourself of your "work" appearance? I give myself, like Aidy, 40 seconds, tops.) And that's what we call romance.